


Blackwing 602

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: Estrangement, F/M, Female Friendship, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Halloween, Holidays, Male-Female Friendship, Partners to Lovers, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23324128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: She doesn't mean to take it. She doesn't mean to take anything, but it's worse than that.
Relationships: Kate Beckett & Richard Castle, Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Comments: 13
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally Chapter 28 of NaFicWriMo, a project I did in November 2017, where I wrote a story a day for the month. I'm having a hard time with writing and with this show and this fandom for reasons having to do with my stupid Brain. But I'm also having a hard time with what was a really rough semester BEFORE there was a pandemic. My dreadmill is broken, my gym is (quite rightly) closed, and I'm just feeling alienated from anything creative or soothing at all. So over the last week or so, I pulled up some story fragments, including this one, and this is the one I finished. It's seven chapters now. I'll put them all up tonight.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She doesn't mean to take it. She doesn't mean to take anything, but it's worse than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my original Author's Note on the story: This starts during A Chill Goes Through Her Veins (1 x 05), but goes through the end of season 1. This probably has a second half, but it’s unlikely I’ll get to it in the next two days. Hopefully it stands alone as is.

She doesn't mean to take it. She doesn't mean to take anything, but it's worse than that.

She hadn’t meant to come here in the first place. Certainly hadn’t meant to stay when the door opened on the bizarre, if domestic, scene. Laser tag gear and mud masks. It’s the last thing she would have pictured, if she’d been in the habit of picturing him at home. But she's not in the habit of that, or hadn’t meant to be. 

She hadn't meant any of this, but here she is darting furtive glances around his office. Here she is slipping a pencil purloined from his desk into the slash pocket of her coat. Here she is asking him for . . . something. Closure. Escape. A satisfying ending for once. Here she is, little more than month in, and he's driven her to this: Neediness and petty larceny.

She hadn’t meant for any of it to happen.

* * *

The larceny isn't so petty, as it turns out. It’s an utterly mortifying revelation she stumbles on the first time she takes her contraband for a spin. It's later when she does. A while later, and she's been pretending the whole time that it's not still in the pocket of that coat. She's been pretending the whole time that she's forgotten all about it

She hasn't forgotten, though. The day she "remembers," it's been a while since she's seen him. A few days, and it's not like she misses him, or anything. It's not that she hasn't been absolutely reveling in peace and quiet and paperwork. It's just that life is slow.

There haven't been any real cases, Not any Beckett-flavored ones, anyway, and now she has an actual day off. She’s already done her errands. She's indulged in her thirty minutes of loafing on the couch, and things are slow, so she retrieves it. The thing she's supposed to have forgotten. The thing she's not supposed to have taken in the first place.

She makes her way to the front closet and slips it back out of the slash pocket of her coat. She sketches her name. She admires the sweep of her signature writ large on a drawing pad she doesn't remember buying. She doesn't remember having, but there it is when she the urge strikes.

It feels gorgeous. The weight of it in her hand and the way it sails across the surface of the paper. There's none of the unpleasant squeak or drag of a plain old yellow No. 2, and that makes her roll her eyes. Of course there'd be none of that. Not in anything he'd deign to write with. Anything he'd own. 

But even accounting for that—for the _himness_ of it—it's an instrument so ridiculously lovely that it makes her curious. The aroma of the wood and the satisfying creak of it in the sharpener. The way it takes an enduring, needle-fine point. The crimped metal of the ferrule gives way beneath the gentle press of her thumb when she eases more of the eraser free to study the bevel he's left, and that may be the detail that most captures her attention.

He's used this one, and the fascination isn't in the contagious magic of it—an object he might have used to sketch one of the Derrick Storm scenes that helped her keep her head above water a decade ago. It isn't _just_ in contagious magic, her secret identity as a long-standing Richard Castle fan girl, notwithstanding. It’s a mystery, too—Richard Castle, professional annoyance, doesn't strike her as a pencil person in the least—and mysteries are her bread and butter.

He takes notes. Infuriatingly takes notes on the back of her paperwork. In the margins of her notes. He tears the edges off her legal pads and leaves them ragged. He takes notes in the stupid spiral pad he remembers every once in a while. On his phone sometimes, when he thinks he can get away with it. But when he writes by hand, it’s all bold gestures. Every time she’s caught him writing, it’s been all emphatic ink and the rare strikeout, just as bold. 

And then there’s this. A Blackwing 602 that he's obviously used. The only one he's used of an even dozen. That had been part of the draw, though she only realizes it now in casting her detective's mind back to the scene of the crime. To a cheesy, lump mug that his kid must've made for him and a forest of twelve pencils, eleven of them all of a height with one another. Eleven with precise, pristine erasers.

And this one, shorter than its companions by an inch or more, its eraser definitely and emphatically the worse for wear. It’s the only one he had used, and somehow it had made its way into her coat pocket. Somehow, it had made its way home with her to sail across the page of a drawing pad she doesn't remember buying.

It's all enough of a mystery to make her curious, and that's unfortunate. It turns out to be unfortunate, because it’s a $100 pencil. She can’t believe her eyes when she Googles it, but $100 is where it starts for a freaking knockoff, and she knows, instinctively that it's not a _knockoff._ That Richard Castle would _certainly_ not have settled for a recently manufactured knockoff.

She can't believe it, but eBay and Google and a dozen honest-to-God fan sites all tell the same story. They list the names of the rich and not-so-rich and famous who've favored it, and God help her, his name shows up under Favored By _and_ In Search Of, and she can't believe it. She's managed to steal a $100 pencil from him.

* * *

She vows to give it back. She imagines a hundred different scenarios. Quietly dropping it back into the cup and letting him wonder. Pushing it across the table when she goes all in at one of his poker games. Casually handing it back and dropping it into the messenger bag he carries sometimes.

She imagines a hundred different ways she undo her crime, but she doesn't act on any of them. And she uses it. She keeps in a drawer at home and finds herself using it. For the Saturday crossword. When the urge to sketch strikes her. To make her grocery lists when she's irritated with him.

She uses it, even though she has every intention of giving it back. She uses it, even though it gives her a heart attack every time she sharpens it, now that she knows what it costs. Now that she can do back-of-the-envelope math on the shavings she tips into her desk-side waste basket at him.

She uses it, all the while assuming that she'll give it back eventually. That some moment will present itself sooner or later.

It never occurs to her that she won't give it back until he betrays her. Until he tries to make her sit in a hospital corridor, like she's some fucking child.

But summer comes, and he does betray her. He tries to make her sit while he breaks the news, and she backs away. She flees on foot and tells herself she's going to snap it half. That she's going to burn the fucking thing and send him the ashes. The crimped ferrule and the charred eraser with no explanation. She tells herself she's damned well going to, but she doesn't.

She brings it to the precinct. She shoves it in her desk there. In the way back of her deepest desk drawer and forgets about it. She pretends to forget about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rook uses Blackwing 602s in the Nikki Heat books. They’re beautiful, sought-after pencils, and even though a new company is producing them now, people will still pay big bucks for originals.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s been back a few weeks by the time she stumbles across it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted these on my Tumblr, so I'm just preserving the author's notes (beginning and end) that I used there for consistency. 
> 
> A/N: This is especially dumb, but I’m up for the foreseeable future, so what the hell. In 2017, when I did NaFicWriMo (30 stories in 30 days), I wrote one called Blackwing 602. I always thought there was probably more to it. I guess this is a little bit more of it. If you don’t want to read the first part, all you need to know is that in “A Chill Goes Through Her Veins” (1 x 05), Beckett pockets what turns out to be a very expensive pencil when she’s in Castle’s office. This part is set around the time of “When the Bough Breaks” (2 x 04)

He’s been back a few weeks by the time she stumbles across it. 

Except she doesn’t stumble across it. The sudden urge to organize her desk drawers within an inch of their lives, well after everyone who’s likely to poke their nose in to her business has gone for the night, is nothing but a clumsy piece of theater, and she’s an audience of one. 

He’s been back a few weeks when she _retrieves_ it, but that’s not quite true, either. The happenstance timeframe and the _take-it-or-leave-it_ spin she’s tried to put on the fact that he’s stumbled back into her life—neither one of those things is quite true. His mere presence isn’t what sends her after it, the strange contraband she’s supposed to have forgotten about. 

He’s staying. That’s what sends her in search of such a questionable prize. It’s what has her rolling the sleek black barrel of it back and forth over her palm. It’s what has her still sitting at her desk when it’s long past knocking-off time, thinking about him as she toys with it. 

She still loves the thing—its perfectly balanced weight, the sleek line of it, the scent. She remembers the magnetic pull of it that night in the loft, the way it practically found its own way into her pocket. She gives into that pull all over again. 

She sets its point to paper and presses it into service, something she’s hardly dared to do the whole time she’s had it, something she hasn’t dared to do at all since she found out the price tag on the thing. But she feels bold tonight. She feels on the verge of something, so she scrawls his name and her own— _Castle_ and _Rook, Beckett_ and _Nikki._ She draws graceful curly brackets around her two names and writes _Thief_ above them.

She smiles down at her handiwork and spins the barrel between her fingers, ending with it point up. She taps the worse-for-wear eraser on the desk beside the yellow legal pad she’s been doodling on and faces what’s actually going on tonight with her and the only evidence of her petty larceny. 

He means to stay, and they’ve done their own clumsy theater-for-two on that score. 

_Three books?!_

_That was kind of a one-time-only situation with her and me …_

_I am going to_ kill _you!_

_I had nothing to do with that phone call._

They’ve gone through the motions of pretending that she sees him as nothing but a thorn in her side and he’s thrilled to be just that. 

They’ve covered their asses as far as the rest of the world goes, but the fact of the matter is, A Certain British Spy turned out to be a bit of scare for both of them—a sudden and unexpected test of the unnamable something that has emerged between the two of them, and her cheeks burn when she thinks about the stupid book party. The stupid, juvenile scene between the two of them and the shock of misery afterward.

_It’s not like I asked you to write the first one…_

_A lot of people would be flattered …_

But the misery of that impending separation was his just as much as hers. She knows that. She’s sure of it, now that he’s staying, and her cheeks burn a different way when she remembers everything before the stupid scene. They burn when she remembers his voice, warm and urgent and matter of fact in the wake of her stumbling thank you for the dedication. 

_I meant it. You are extraordinary._

And she remembers everything afterward, too. She remembers the fragile peace they’d managed even before it turned out he wasn’t going, and the quiet, underneath smile waiting for her when she turned to him. She remembers the warm, real fact of him silently joining her in witness to an unlikely moment of healing grace in Melissa Talbot’s opulent apartment. 

She pictures the awkward hunch of his shoulders afterward, in the moment they both thought was the end, and she knows that the misery was not hers alone. Her cheeks burn when she remembers the startling electric shock of his hand enveloping hers and the aching, stripped down feeling of loss that overtook her as he withdrew. 

_You take care of yourself._

She’s gone from timidly glad he had come back to devastated that he was going in the space of such a short period. And now she’s gone from all that to grateful— _so_ grateful—that he’s staying, that it’s not the end after all. 

It’s this—all of this—that sends her after this stupid, beautiful thing that balances perfectly on the uncertain surface of her upturned palm: He’s staying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I think there’s probably a little more? Who knows. I certainly do not.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She means to make a gift of it, somehow. That’s a surprise to her, truly. It’s not theater like so much has been lately. It’s not even one of the little white lies that make her world go round when it comes to him—when it comes to why on earth she endures, tolerates, suffers his presence. It’s not even that. She means, truly and definitely, to make a gift of it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, just my author's notes from Tumblr. 
> 
> A/N: I guess this is Chapter 3. I posted Chapter 2 yesterday. Chapter 1 goes back to 2017, when I did NaFicWriMo (30 stories in 30 days), I wrote one called Blackwing 602. Second part is obviously on Tumblr. If you don’t want to read the first part, all you need to know is that in “A Chill Goes Through Her Veins” (1 x 05), Beckett pockets what turns out to be a very expensive pencil when she’s in Castle’s office. This part is set around the time of “When the Bough Breaks” (2 x 04)

She means to make a gift of it, somehow. That’s a surprise to her, truly. It’s not theater like so much has been lately. It’s not even one of the little white lies that make her world go round when it comes to him—when it comes to why on earth she endures, tolerates, suffers his presence. It’s not even that. She means, truly and definitely, to make a gift of it. 

It’s not true from the first or anything. Not right from the moment that she “stumbles” across it. She has it on hand, and that’s the little white lie. So is the fact that she intends—fully intends—to give it back to hm with a flourish. 

She’s been telling herself that one since the sudden urge vigorously organize her desk came on those few nights ago. She’s nodded to herself with satisfaction at the idea that she’s made a decision—she intends to present it with some cutting remark that’ll make him narrow his eyes and flash a smile that’s half admiring and half something more complicated. But opening after opening after opening passes her by when she might have given it back in just that way, and she realizes that she means it to be something more than that. 

She means it to be a gift, but that’s absurd. She stole the damned thing. She flat-out _stole_ it right out of his office the first time she’d ever set foot in his home. And the fact that she’d had no idea how much it was worth—the fact that even then she’d never entertained the notion of a freaking _pencil_ that could run someone the price of a massage at very tony spa indeed—is immaterial. It’s stolen property she has in her possession, and the idea of turning it into a gift is just nonsense. 

  
And still, that’s what she means to do, though it’s a while before she sees that. 

She carries it in her bag nearly every day. She transfers it to a side drawer in her desk, where she pins it against the very back with post-its or boxes of those stupid binder clips that are too small to be of any use to anyone. And then when it’s finally knocking off time, she looks around like the sneak thief she is, and slips it back to the bag again. 

It’s a ritual she’d invented on the spot the day she “stumbled” across it, and every day after that, it burns a hole in the bag, in the drawer, in the bag again, lather, rinse, repeat. And for a while, she really does think—every single day—that she’ll find a moment where simply handing it back to him will make sense. 

And not quite every single day, she lets the possible moment pass, until another evening rolls around and finds her still at her desk, straightening, organizing, waiting for it to be safe to retrieve her contraband. And for whatever reason, that night, she sighs. She rolls her eyes at herself, and accepts the fact that she means to make a gift of it. 

A gift for what, though? It’s an awkward question. For coming back? For staying? 

That’s not it at all. However shared their misery might have been, there’s still a healthy dose of _How dare you?_ simmering in her veins about all that. She’s grateful he stayed. She’s glad in her heart of hearts, but it’s not the kind of thing she has any intention of admitting, even obliquely. 

So, then. A gift for what? 

The book, she realizes one dreary Sunday. The dedication, a little, but mostly it’s the book itself. She’s dragging around her apartment, unable or unwilling to settle down to any of the half dozen things she could, should, ought to be doing when she slips the book from the shelves. 

She collapses back on to the couch and tucks her toes up between the cushions. She slips off the dust jacket, and when she sets it aside, the sense of familiarity embedded in the act is so strong that it’s practically déjà vu. It’s so familiar that when the hardcover drops to her thighs, the well-cracked spine falls open to her favorite spot, and that’s unnerving as hell. 

And enlightening. 

Because it’s not page 105 it falls open to. That particular stretch still makes her roll her eyes, even if it makes her cheeks burn, too. But that’s not where her copy falls open anyway. It falls open to Powell. _Casper_ he calls the art thief here on the page—one more ridiculous name, and she’s not even sure why he bothered. It’s Powell obviously enough that he must’ve gotten himself in trouble all over again, and she doesn’t hate that. But the trouble he must be in isn’t what she loves about the scene either. 

_A fine woman who knew her business was killed this week._

It’s a simple bit of dialogue to move the plot forward. It’s motivation for the reluctant, retired thief to weigh in with information on the secondary victim that will move Nikki’s investigation forward. But to her, it’s more than that. It’s a touchstone for the two of them. It’s him reaching all the way back to Joanne Delgado and the stark reality that sank in for him that day—the truth that every murder claims an untold number of victims, whoever might be left still breathing. It’s him shading in what’s so much more than a detail to her with such unexpected delicacy. 

And that’s somehow why she wants to make a gift of it. Because he’s taken her life—her work—and he has … amplified it. He has made what’s good and important—the good and the important that extend beyond even the abstract goal of justice—sing out, even to her, and she wants to pay him back in kind, somehow. 

Somehow. 

So she means to make a gift of it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Playing chicken here with myself. I know how it ends, but I have very little of that written. But I guess I have all the time in the world between now and tomorrow morning when the sun will (probably) be up, and I have to continue hammering away at completely reinvented classes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re coming up on Hallowe’en, and that seems fitting. It seems seems like an excuse, but the kind of excuse that’s ok—something that will more or less be a bit of harmless theater for two. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I guess the saga continues? Chapters 2 and 3 are here on Tumblr. Chapter 1 is on AO3. If you don’t want to read the first part, all you need to know is that in “A Chill Goes Through Her Veins” (1 x 05), Beckett pockets what turns out to be a very expensive pencil when she’s in Castle’s office. This part is has advanced to “Vampire Weekend” (2 x 06)

They’re coming up on Hallowe’en, and that seems fitting. It seems seems like an excuse, but the kind of excuse that’s ok—something that will more or less be a bit of harmless theater for two. 

She finds a box for it. It’s a black, watered-silk contraption with a wide satin ribbon that has some deep violet in it when the light hits it right. The sides of the box fall away when she pulls the ribbon, and then she finds a box to go around _that._ A proper gift box that just happens to be black, too, and flocked with velvet ravens, because apparently people give Hallowe’en gifts these days? That makes her feel a little strange about the whole endeavor, but she perseveres. 

The problem is when to give it to him, though. The party seems obvious, but the problem is, she’s not at all set on going to to the party. In fact, she’s pretty well set on _not_ going, as everyone gets more and more amped up about it, and the more it seems like it’s going to be the kind of affair that belongs to his other life—the one that doesn’t really have her in it—the less she wants to go. 

But then she egg sits for him. Alexis calls, in real trouble, and he races to the rescue, and she … egg sits. She has a running, under-her-breath monologue about the fact that she is absolutely _not_ egg sitting. It’s undermined, though, by the nest she spends a not inconsiderable amount of time constructing out of the cardboard innards of a roll of duct tape and the superior men’s room toilet paper she has to sneak in to steal.

He calls her, late and subdued, ostensibly to ask after Feggin, but really to tell her about Alexis’s friend. He downplays it. He forces some bluster into his tone, but she can tell it was harrowing. She can tell he’ll be forever haunted by all the things he simply won’t be able to protect his daughter from. 

She remembers that he is more than he pretends to be, and more than she pretends to think he is. And thanks, in part, to Feggin, she thinks she’s being silly about the party. She thinks it might be a _little_ about the life he has without her in it, but it’ll also be about Lanie and the boys and she can maybe just leave the box mysteriously in the middle of his desk, in sight of the four figures’ worth of pencils she _didn’t_ steal. She thinks stealth, rather than a flourish, might just be what the situation needed all along. 

And then he gets her—he _gets_ her—with that stupid, on-the-fly story about the little boy washing up on the beach. He gets her with the housekeeper’s son, and everything she loves about the book enough that the spine come to rest on her thighs and cracks open to that particular spot is now what she hate, hate, _hates_ him for. So, clearly, she _has_ to go to the damned party to get him back. 

So she goes to the damned party and she kind of gets him back. And the party itself is s almost not at all about the life he has that doesn’t have her in it. He is a goofy, hovering, attentive host. The decorations are over the top and must have cost the equivalent of a hundred pencils. There are theatrical skulls under glass domes and enough dry ice to keep a wave of sinister-looking fog rolling off the cauldron of punch all night. That—the grandeur and the cash he must have dropped on it all is inclined to make her squirm, but then there’s the fact that the food is absolutely silly. 

It’s _eyeball_ this and _entrail_ that. It’s spider web cotton candy from an actual carnival cart and mini corn dogs done up to look like bloody severed fingers. It has all the panache of a Hallowe’en-themed middle school mixer, and the whole thing is almost entirely about the part of his life she is very much in, and it’s fun. The party is a lot of fun, and she almost forgets about the box in her coat pocket. 

She _does_ forget about it until she finally goes in search of said coat. She’s been meaning to leave for a while now, and he’s said he’ll get the coat for her two or three times, never to return with it. She thinks he’s stalling. Warmth comes into her cheeks, because it definitely seems like he’s stalling to keep her there, and some small part of her would like to give in. 

Some small part of her would like to linger and bicker with him as she helps clean up. It wonders if he’d offer her a nightcap—or maybe make her a late-night coffee in the fancy machine he quite obviously must have tucked away to make room for punch bowls and party plates tonight. 

But the larger part of her has an early morning, The larger part of her knows she’s probably lived dangerously enough for one night and it’s not a good idea to hang around until the other guests have gone, until Martha and Alexis have drifted upstairs.

The larger part of her wins out. It goes in search of her coat, though that, as it turns out, is no mean feat. 

“On the bed, honey,” Martha says absently when Kate taps her apologetically on the shoulder. She’s deep in conversation with Ryan about God knows what. “Richard’s bed,” she adds, gesturing vaguely with her cigarette holder. 

Kate feels a flush creep along her skin to pain the _vee_ of skin above her black top. She can’t very well march into his bedroom in search of her coat. And what’s a millionaire doing piling coats up on his bed like his mom’s out of town and he’s throwing a kegger? 

She’s annoyed with him. The larger part of her is definitely annoyed, and even the smaller part of her that was flattered at the idea he might be stalling is coming around. Irritation makes her impulsive. She decides that she not only _can_ march into his bedroom, it’s imperative that she does it and calls his bluff. 

She threads her way through the thinning crowd and heads for the gap in the bookcases that leads to his office. The door sits most of the way open. She pauses with her hand splayed against the brushed stainless edging as though the point of contact can help refresh her memory of the layout—desk straight ahead, wall of windows to the left, a matching door to what must be his bedroom off to the right. 

  
She takes a breath, steels herself, and strides, shoulder first, into the murky light filtering in from the street. She strides, shoulder first right into him. 

“Kate!” His hands reflexively come up to steady her. Something slithers to the floor. A mortified glance informs her that it’s her coat. “You must have—“ 

“I was looking for—“ 

They’re babbling over one another. They stoop at exactly the same moment and nearly knock heads. He comes up laughing, holding one end of the coat. She comes up embarrassed, holding the other. 

“I’m sorry.” He flaps the sleeve sheepishly. “I told you I’d get this like half an hour ago.” 

“Forty-five minutes,” she blurts, wishing immediately that she hadn’t. “But who’s counting?” 

“You, I guess.” He says it in a genial enough tone, but there’s something a little disappointed—a little guarded, maybe—in the way he looses his hold on the coat. “Sorry you had to come looking for it.” 

“Not a total loss.” She fusses with the coat. She’s working her nerve up or something, working to get back the easy feeling that’s flowed between them almost the whole night. “Got to visit the Bat Cave again.” 

“The Bat Cave!’ He brightens. She sees the memory bloom in him. “The first time you came here.” 

A warm grin spreads across his face. It’s wide and a little dopey, and she knows for certain that it matches the one on her own. She shifts the coat in her arms. She feels the sharp outline of the raven-flocked velvet box in the pocket and knows this is the right moment. She knows she should hand it over with a flourish right now. 

But Lanie has other ideas. Martha and Esposito and Ryan and three or four other people she doesn’t really know have other ideas. They’re crowding into the office behind Kate looking for coats, looking for the powder room that’s completely on the other side of the loft, looking to settle a bet. 

He looks at her over the mini-sea of bobbing heads. She looks at him from around Martha’s hat. They share a rueful smile, and the moment is gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: A gift block? That’s lame, Brain. Been a long time since I wrote anything where moments connect to moments. Rusty. And dumb, as always.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The outer velvet box, flocked with ravens, opens with a shunk as the top separates from the bottom. Home, far later than she should be, she sets the top aside on her desk. The bottom rests next to it, with its own nested box still snug inside. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Ever been trying to write something and you need your characters to just cross a damned room and they won’t? Yeah, just asking. No reason. IChapters 2, 3, and 4 are here on Tumblr. Chapter 1 is on AO3. If you don’t want to read the first part, all you need to know is that in “A Chill Goes Through Her Veins” (1 x 05), Beckett pockets what turns out to be a very expensive pencil when she’s in Castle’s office. This is technically just after Love Me Dead (2 x 09), but this doesn’t have anything to do with that.

The outer velvet box, flocked with ravens, opens with a _shunk_ as the top separates from the bottom. Home, far later than she should be, she sets the top aside on her desk. The bottom rests next to it, with its own nested box still snug inside. 

That’s how things stand for a while after Hallowe’en—a while after the party. Then the day comes, windy and cold, when she tips the inner box, watered silk and tied tight with an intricate bow, out of the bottom. And again, that’s how things stand for a while. 

She doesn’t forget about the contraband inside—the stolen property she means to make a gift of—any more than she’d forgotten about it for the months that she’d left the thing itself sitting at the far back of her desk drawer at work. But it’s not the focus of so much attention. It’s not the focus of any kind of ritual, daily or otherwise. Unless leaving that intricate bow—that fancy contraption—intact is a ritual. 

It might be a ritual. 

Its time has passed. That’s what she thinks whenever she happens to take in what now seems to be the funeral hue of both boxes, the embossed outline of each velvet raven. It all seems ominous now, not silly and festive and _right_ as it had before, but she knows the change is in her. She knows it’s the month, it’s the weather, it’s everything. 

It’s proximity to her birthday and the way the end of another year hastens toward her. It’s the holidays she won’t celebrate for the tenth year running, and she doesn’t resent that. Really, she doesn’t. Thanksgiving, Christmas—she knows her place in it all and there’s not a single person rushing out of the precinct in a loud tie, an ugly holiday cardigan, an ill-fitting football jersey that she resents. 

But after that—after the last calendar page flips—it will be… more than ten years. From now on—for the rest of her life—it will always be more than ten years since her mother was in this world. She will pass out of her twenties, sooner rather than later. She will enter her thirties and another decade without her mom. 

She looks at her hands all the time now. At home and at work and everywhere in between, she looks at them and she can’t help counting each finger. Whether she’s typing or bumping the plastic curve of the vending machine with the side of her fist, whether she’s deftly wielding chopsticks or curling five fingers around the grip of her gun and bracing with the other five to face down a paper target—she can’t help thinking that they’re not enough. They’ll never be enough again to count off all the years it’s been. 

She’s in her own head. It’s not unusual for her, for this time of year, it just feels that way. She snorts aloud when she catches herself thinking it. It _is_ what she feels it is. That’s the profound-sounding truth she finds herself contemplating in the waning hours of her birthday, also known as Any Given Tuesday. 

She’s had a call from her dad and cupcake from Lanie. The boys and the Captain know better than to even mention it, but Lanie is irrepressible. He—Castle—is surprisingly repressible. Surprisingly _repressed._

 _At home again, far later than she should be, s_ he sits with her chin propped in her palm and one elbow on her desk, and she contemplates that, too. Music comes low through her computer’s speakers. The five inadequate fingers of her left hand toy with the trailing end of the ribbon around the watered silk box, and she contemplates the fact that her birthday has all but passed without a word of acknowledgement from him. 

He had clearly _known_ it was her birthday. He’d been repressible— _repressed—_ all day, not dead. He had jogged his knee and opened his mouth, then closed it. He’d looked expectantly at her, then looked away every single one of the thousand times she had caught him. But he hadn’t said a word, slipped a clandestine card beneath her desk blotter, ordered something ridiculous and timed it so that she’d find it on her doorstep, late in the day. 

It’s surprising. And it’s satisfying in a strange way that suits the two of them. It’s him reading the room—reading her and where she is. It’s him, for once, not pushing his way into every corner of her life, but not withdrawing, either. It’s him being … present on her terms. It’s shockingly mature and respectful. 

And it’s lonely. 

  
Tonight with five inadequate fingers drumming against her cheekbone, five inadequate fingers toying with the ribbon of an intricate bow whose moment has passed, it’s lonely. 

She tugs on the end of the ribbon in something more than frustration. The intricate bow comes undone. The watered silk sides of the box fall away with satisfying immediacy like the walls of a magician’s box. But rather than laying bare a space devoid of the lovely assistant in her fishnet tights and sequined body suit, they reveal the gleaming ebony barrel. 

It’s an odd thrill to see it again, to feel it in her hand. It tugs her backward in time, just over two short weeks, two long, grey weeks. 

_The Bat Cave!_

She hears his voice, bright and pleased that she wasn’t mad, that she remembered that first time, that the party was not going to end on a sour note between them. She feels the warmth of her own grin, because she’d been pleased, too. She’d been eager to mark the occasion—to celebrate … them, she supposes. Their partnership. 

She’d been eager and she still is. She taps the eraser on the splayed out inner surface of the tiny magician’s box. She glances at her watch and sees that the last few minutes of her birthday haven’t quite ticked away yet. 

It’s too late to call Lanie, and she wishes it weren’t. She has a favor to ask and it’s going to sting a little. It’s going to involve some mumbling, some blushing, some swallowing of her own pride, and if it weren’t very definitely too late right now, she’d just as soon ask it tonight. 

In the meantime, though, she presses the sharp, silky point of the pencil against her fingertip. She smiles to herself and envisions it, transformed. She whispers to herself— _The Bat Cave—_ and wonders how early is too early to call Lanie in the morning. 

She’s still eager. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Blame having tricked myself to running nearly 7 miles in the snow with snowflakes attacking my eyeballs? It suddenly occurred to me that Kate’s winter headspace and rituals would kick in right after Hallowe’en. I think there’s probably just a chapter or two after this.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lanie is, eventually, merciless. But Kate expected that. She’d braced for that, and she certainly prefers it to the way things start. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Welp. Those ding dang characters still haven’t quite made it to the other side of the room. Chapters 2–5 are here on Tumblr. Chapter 1 is on AO3. If you don’t want to read the first part, all you need to know is that in “A Chill Goes Through Her Veins” (1 x 05), Beckett pockets what turns out to be a very expensive pencil when she’s in Castle’s office. We’re somewhere around One Man’s Treasure (2 x 10) or maybe The Fifth Bullet (2 x 11), but again, this isn’t really involving those episodes. It’s just towards the end of the first calendar year these two knew one another.

Lanie is, eventually, merciless. But Kate expected that. She’d braced for that, and she certainly prefers it to the way things start. 

“Thought you made it pretty clear you weren’t interested when I brought him up the first time.” 

There’s none of her friend’s trademark sass in what ought to be an opening salvo. Lanie is perplexed by the early morning summons. She is confused by the favor Kate is asking of her, stumbling as she goes. She is downright alarmed by the fact that Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD, seems to have come over all shy. 

It’s no wonder that she’s perplexed, by all that, but this goes well beyond puzzlement. Lanie, who considers it to be her sacred duty to tell it like it is, is being cautious. She is treading on eggshells, and Kate pretty much hates that. She pretty much hates the obvious conclusion—that she’s been wearing her grief-stricken heart on her sleeve and everyone has noticed. 

“I’m not _interested_ ,” she snaps. The air quotes she carves around the last word stiffen Lanie’s spine. They arch her eyebrow, and Kate thinks to herself, _Good._ She continues on in a tone that’s every bit as brisk. “Not in _him._ I’m interested in his work.” 

“His _work_.” Lanie hits back with razor-sharp air quotes of her own. “That what the kids are calling it these days?”

Emboldened by the snark, Kate produces a box from her pocket. It’s not the fancy magician’s box, or the one with the ravens that seem silly now—silly here with the year tipping steadily toward Christmas. This is just something plain she had lying around. It’s long and stiff-sided enough to keep its cargo safe. She sets it on the cafe table between the plate with Lanie’s half-eaten croissant and the muffin she hasn’t even peeled the paper from. Her hands aren’t shaking. She doesn’t think they are, but she quickly pulls them back and wraps them around the giant bowl of her coffee cup, just in case. 

“He’s a sculptor, right? And he does miniatures.” She presses her palms into the warm ceramic to keep her hands from twitching the damned box back out of sight. She is having second thoughts about this. She is having third and fourth and fourteenth thoughts about this and it’s another thing too big to count on all her fingers, but she’s come this far. “You kept—“ Her teeth come together hard at the memory, unwelcome as it is for any number of reasons. “You sent me, like, a _million_ links to pictures of his work and articles about his work and—” 

“Well ex _cuse_ me for trying to fix you up with some hot artsy type. Nobody else was doing a damned thing to drag you up out of that funk Castle left you—“ Lanie’s over-the-top _excuse-you_ attitude evaporates instantly. Her gaze snaps to Kate. “This is about _Castle_.” She frowns, trying to make sense of it. “You want me to hook you up with the guy you blew off all summer—” 

“ _Not_ hook up—“ She tries to cut in, but there’s no stopping Lanie now. 

“—so you can … what? _Finally_ make a move with Castle?” 

To describe Lanie’s stare as piercing would be grossest understatement, but Kate bears up. She manages not to wither, even though that troublesome shyness is creeping over her again. 

“It’s not a move,” she says firmly. Lanie’s stare takes on a decidedly skeptical cast, but it’s true. She hears her own voice. She feels the shape of the words and knows it’s true—she’s not making a move at all, so she goes on. “It’s a gesture.” 

She reaches for the box again. She slides a nail under the flap at the top and tips the contents out into the palm of her hand. Lanie’s face goes absolutely blank. Kate looks from her friend to the reverent way she herself is holding the pencil so that the shining black barrel will catch the winter sunlight that’s pleasantly toasting the two of them and their table through the floor-to-ceiling glass. The tableau is absurd. She looks like she’s waiting for a choir of angels to take their cue, and it’s absolutely _absurd. S_ he gives in to the wild urge to laugh. 

“It’s his. It’s … used,” she manages to gasp. “The damned thing is used, and Lanie, you won’t believe—“ it’s too much. She grabs the box and taps the pencil right back in, because the sight of it is just too much. “You won’t believe how much it cost.” 

“Girl,” Lanie folds her arms across her chest. “You better go right back to the beginning.” 

So she does. She goes back to laser tag and Martha’s green clay mask. She goes back Melanie Cavanagh and that stupid, _stupid_ impulse. 

“You stole a pencil.” Lanie eyes up the box lying between them like it might rise up like a cobra and strike. “ _That_ hundred-and-something-dollar pencil and now you not only want to hack it up, you want to make _me_ some kind of accessory after the fact.”   
  
“And your friend.” Kate nods. She meets Lanie’s eye boldly. She’s feeling a little giddy now that it’s all out on the table, so to speak, but she manages to keep a straight face. “The one I blew off all summer.” 

“And it’s not a move, it’s a _gesture?_ ” 

Lanie gives her the one-two of the air quotes and the hard stare, but Kate just shrugs. She rolls her shoulders and feels her shyness slipping away. She’s told her tale. She’s asked her favor. Lanie thinks she’s nuts—she thinks _gesture_ is what the kids are calling it these days—but she hasn’t said no. 

“It’s a gesture,” Kate echoes. She tries to keep her voice level, not too eager. “So you’ll do it? You’ll ask if he can do it?” 

Lanie gives a disbelieving shake of her head. “I’ll ask.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: It’s so tempting to write Lanie giving Kate shit.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Just so you know,” Vincent begins, “I am under strict orders from Lanie to give you grief for not giving in to her hard-sell tactics over the summer.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: End of Saga. It’s only taken nearly two-and-a-half years, and the gift didn’t end up being quite what I thought it would be. I will, I think, eventually post this as a stand-alone multi-chap on AO3. For the moment, though, Chapter 1 is on AO3 and the other chapters are here on Tumblr If you don’t want to read the first part, all you need to know is that in “A Chill Goes Through Her Veins” (1 x 05), Beckett pockets what turns out to be a very expensive pencil when she’s in Castle’s office. This part is set at the end of Sucker Punch (2 x 13)

_“Just so you know,”_ Vincent begins, _“I am under strict orders from Lanie to give you grief_ _for not giving in to her hard-sell tactics over the summer.”_

Kate silently opens and closes her mouth at the other end of the line. 

“… or–orders discharged?” she stammers when she finally finds her voice again. 

_“Due diligence done.”_ Vincent, far more merciful than their mutual friend, laughs. _“So tell me about the material. Lanie said it’s a 602?”_

“It is.” The response comes out with a little more starch in it than is reasonable, but she hears the skepticism shading the artist’s voice. She hears, and she can’t help being childishly offended. “Genuine, not a reproduction.” 

There’s a minute pause. Vincent is a stranger to her, but it doesn’t take an experienced Detective to pick up on the fact that her pushback has provoked the aural equivalent of an eye roll. _“Could I get a few pictures of it? Phone camera snaps are fine.”_

“Sure. Of course. Just a second.” 

The blush of embarrassment catches up to her. It’s a ridiculous thing to get defensive about, and she’s glad enough to have some busywork until she recovers herself. She retrieves the pencil from where it rests, safely back in its magician’s box now that it’s back at home with her, and sets up the shot. The pale wood of the desk is a good enough backdrop for the first shot, but she takes the barrel in hand for the second, wanting to bring the bevel with the lettering into sharp focus. 

“Coming through now,” she says, quickly hitting send before any self-consciousness about the curiously intimate image of the pencil resting lightly between her fingers can overtake her. 

_“Yes, I see the thumbnails. The lettering does look vintage. Just let me—”_ There’s an abrupt silence on the end of the phone. She thinks for a second that the call has dropped. When Vincent speaks again, he sounds something more than surprised. _“It’s used.”_

“Yeah.” A feeling of dread settles on her. “Yes. It’s—is that a … a problem?” 

It might be a problem. The thought hadn’t occurred to her, and in that moment, she’s suddenly aware just how attached she’s grown to this scheme of hers. She’s suddenly aware what a blow it would be to have to give it simply back to him, as is, minus half a dozen strokes in her own hand. 

_“No,”_ Vincent says slowly. _“It’s not a problem for me. And it does seem to be an original. Based on lettering and some of the details on the ferrule, I’d say it’s most likely on the early end of the Eberhard years.”_ There’s another pause that just might kill her. _“I’m just curious how much a used one of these set you back. Purely professional curiosity. If you’re not comfortable—”_

“It’s not mine,” she blurts. “It’s—it belongs to a colleague.” She cringes at the word, but she’s not about to spend any amount of time trying to find a better one with Vincent, The Artist She Is Not At All Interested In on the line. “I wound up with it by … mistake, and I didn’t realize—and now it’s been so long, I feel like I can’t just …” 

She trails off, but Vincent, The More Merciful Than Lanie, steps into the breach. _“You can’t send the casserole dish back empty.”_

“Exactly.” She laughs a little too hard, a little too loudly, but it’s genuine. “That’s exactly it.” 

* * *

The process takes forever, but it’s also done in no time at all. It starts with sketches Vincent sends her of the various options. She thinks, at first, that the most dramatic is the obvious choice—wings spread to their maximum extension, one capacious ear rotated far away from the other. But she’s drawn, suddenly and certainly, to something far simpler, the wings wrapped tightly around the body, the ears perked up, and the gaze straight on, bearing the suggestion of a secret joke. 

After the sketches, there’s the hand off. Vincent is easy going and cute. He’s funny, and skews decidedly nerdy at the prospect of working in such a prized medium. He vibes decided interest in her, but rolls with it when she projects Not At All Interested back at him. 

And she hands it off in its plain, stiff-sided box—this thing she has held on to and ostentatiously forgotten about without ever forgetting about it—and it’s hard. It takes forever. And it’s done in no time at all. 

It’s exquisite. Vincent shows it to her with pride and there’s no need to manufacture even a scintilla of her appreciation. It’s simply exquisite. 

She transfers the careful bed of gauzy packing material back to the magician’s box. She flips up the four sides and taps the lid in place. She ties an intricate bow, and the whole thing makes one last trip in her bag and back into her desk drawer. 

  
She’s calm about it now that it’s done—now that it’s perfect. She doesn’t try to map out the perfect moment to give it to him. She doesn’t even really wonder when that might be. She simply tucks it into the drawer and knows she’ll know when the moment arrives. 

She does know. 

Dick Coonan is dead. Dick Coonan has _been_ dead and no one but her—no one but him—seems to remember where on the scuffed tiles the blood of her mother’s killer pooled. No one but her—no one but him—seems to think her hands look any different. 

She’s been on desk duty while the shooting clears. He has been … not quite absent. He calls. He texts her things. He comes by for flying visits, and when he’s there, he talks nonstop. He keeps his eyes averted from the exact spot on the scuffed tiles that Dick Coonan’s blood pooled. He keeps his eyes averted from her hands. 

And then the shooting clears and there he is, laden down with bags and cartons and containers full of every food imaginable. There he is, talking nonstop until she quietly tells her it wasn’t his fault—until he solemnly tells her that he is going. 

But he isn’t going. He _can’t_ go, and she tells him just that. She tells him that this job is hard—that it _was_ hard long before there phantom blood stains on the tiles, on her hands. She tells him that she’s used to him, that he has to stay. And he says he will. He’ll stay. 

She doesn’t give it to him right then. They share a meal first. They share several meals, mixed and matched. But she does give it to him later, not with a flourish, but with a simple, matter-of-fact push across the stretch of her desk that they’re sharing. 

He gives her a curious look, but he’s too much the kid to delay satisfaction with questions. He studies the watered-silk oblong for a moment, then tugs at the ribbon.Delight spreads over his face as the magician’s box sides fall away. He takes a long moment to appreciate the artistry, then reach eagerly for the gauzy packing material. 

She sees realization dawn even as as he pulling the gleaming ebony barrel free. His eyes go wide, and the tip of his thumb finds what is obviously the still-familiar bevel on the eraser. His fingers roam, eager to familiarize themselves all over again, but their movements hardly last half a second. 

They stop absolutely when he spies the sculpture, the minute, painstakingly detailed figure of a bat, with its wings wrapped tight around its own body, peering straight out of an intelligent, mischievous face as though it would like to share a secret joke. 

“This is amazing,” he says in the end—he says simply as he folds his palm gently around it and brings it close to his heart. “Kate. It’s amazing.” 

He doesn’t ask … anything. He just holds it close to his heart, and she sees the threads of more stories than she can count spinning out between them. 

She sees herself punk-ing him, faking him out with harrowing tales pencil adventures that never, ever happened. She sees him falling for it, wanting to fall for every word. She sees him leaning forward, eager, with his knuckles pressed against his lips as she doles out the whole story—eventually doles it out—in minuscule increments. 

“Is there—?” He trails off, enraptured with the gift. It’s an effort of will to bring his attention back to her, but she’s fine with that. She’s absolutely fine with the way his fingers open so he can take quick peeks at the little bat, then close greedily around it again. “Did I miss an occasion?” 

“No,” she says, smiling to herself—smiling at him like she has a secret joke she’s willing to share. No, he hasn’t missed an occasion. He _won’t_ miss any. 

He’s staying. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading. I’m sorry—especially at this moment in time—that I wrote something like 8000 words about a pencil.


End file.
